


The Love That We Share

by Laurenhd08



Category: Descendants (Disney Movies)
Genre: Child Abuse, Drug Use, Eating Disorders, Emotional Abuse, F/F, F/M, M/M, Mental Illness, PTSD, Rape Aftermath, Rape Recovery, Rough times ahead, Self-Esteem Issues, Self-Harm, Sexual Abuse, Trigger Warnings, dark themes, hurt kids who love each other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-15
Updated: 2019-09-23
Packaged: 2020-03-06 02:07:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18841447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laurenhd08/pseuds/Laurenhd08
Summary: It starts on a rainy afternoon in mid-October. It starts in a cramped bedroom with little to no personal artifacts and a musty smell that lingers in the air. It starts on a day like any other. It starts with Mal and Jay.





	1. It Starts With Mal and Jay

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys, welcome to the first chapter of The Love That We Share! I'm super excited about this story and I intend for it to be a longer one. This is going to be slightly AU and it will focus on the relationship between Mal, Evie, Carlos and Jay as they grow up on the Isle and in Auradon. I don't have a beta or a partner to bounce ideas off of byt if anyone would like to help me with that then please let me know.
> 
> I'd also like to mention the fact that this story deals with a lot of dark themes and subject matter. Please take care of yourself and don't read this story if you foresee any potential triggers for yourself. That said, I hope you guys enjoy this story as much as I am enjoying writing it.

It starts on a rainy afternoon in mid-October. It starts in a cramped bedroom with little to no personal artifacts and a musty smell that lingers in the air. It starts on a day like any other. It starts with Mal and Jay.

They meet when Mal is five and Jay has just turned six and it’s not exactly love at first sight. Jay is cocky and mulish and he won’t give Mal her ball back under the guise of “finders keepers.” Mal is cutting and hot-headed and she kicks Jay in the shin under the guise of “you suck.” Needless to say, it takes the relationship awhile to progress past childish insults and petty pranks and if they were being honest with themselves, they’d have to admit that it hadn’t really progressed past those aspects at all. They’d just learned to incorporate new ones as well.

There was never an outright shift from “I’d kill him if he weren’t so much faster than me” and “I think she feeds off of other children’s souls in order to sustain her life force” to “I swear to God if you even look at him the wrong way, I’ll play with your entrails” and “Touch her and I’ll maim you with my bare hands.” It was messy and non-linear and at times it reached a near snail’s pace, but somewhere along the line stolen bouncy balls and bruised shins turned into sharing food and bandaging each other’s wounds. 

But I’m getting ahead of myself. This is a story and every good story has a beginning. This is theirs.

Mal loses count of how many repetitions she’s completed after the worn out ball bounces off of her wall and into her hand for the two-thousandth time that afternoon. Maleficent had sentenced her daughter to her room under the pretense that she was expecting company and she didn’t need Mal’s “insufferable mannerisms” and “idiotic behaviors” interfering with a potential business deal. That was six hours ago and the five-year-old has yet to hear the arrival of any visitors. She’s about to sneak out of her room and risk punishment in order to scavenge for something to quell the hunger pains that have been shooting through her stomach since the day before yesterday, when she hears the tell-tale creak of the door to the main entrance being pushed open and the muffled voice of a man with a thick accent. She listens to passive-aggressive greetings and empty threats for about two minutes before resigning herself to the fact that she’ll be stuck in this room for another two hours at the very least and returning her attention to her bouncy ball.

It’s another ten minutes before her door swings open to reveal a lanky boy with shoulder length dark hair and brown eyes that twinkle with mischief. Mal jumps about ten feet out of her skin at the unexpected intrusion, but it’s the fact that she hadn’t heard anyone approach that really puts her on edge. They both eye one another warily before the taller boy picks up Mal’s ball. She must have dropped it in the commotion.

“Is this your room? It doesn’t have any stuff in it.” The boy is throwing the ball up in the air and catching it by the time that Mal has scampered to her feet from her position on the floor. The glare that she shoots him is of a caliber that would make her mother proud. That is, if Maleficent felt things like pride and joy. 

“Apparently neither does your brain, numbskull. Give me my ball and get out of my room!” Mal’s frustration grows to new heights when the boy just levels her with an infuriating smirk and a cocked eyebrow. She’s not used to dealing with kids that are in her age bracket but if they’re all like this, then she’s almost thankful that Maleficent has kept her on such a tight leash.

“The name’s Jay. I’m Jafar’s son.” On the Isle, Mal has learned quickly that reputation is all that matters and from what she’s heard from her mother, Jafar’s reputation is a nasty one. Still, she’s young and inexperienced enough to not be afraid of much on the Isle, her mother notwithstanding, and if this Jay kid thinks that he can just waltz into her room then he has another thing coming.

“I don’t remember asking. Give me my damn ball.” She’s heard her mother use the word enough to know that it adds punctuation and a threatening connotation. Couple that with the fact that she’s Maleficent’s daughter and is getting up in his face right now and the boy should be dropping the ball and running for the hills. He doesn’t. She hates that.

“Wow, you really need to chill,” his laugh is loud but not unkind and he continues with an air of challenge. “Haven’t you ever heard of finders keepers? You want it? Take it.”

Jay holds the ball above his head and she’s never felt this much agitation towards someone in her entire life. She’s not going to jump for it. That’s weak and pathetic and she knows that even with a solid jump she won’t be able to reach it. It takes about thirty seconds for a smirk of her own to form. 

“Guess this is mine now princess, better luck next-” He hadn’t paid the look on her face any mind. He learns not to do that again when a heavy boot connects with his shin. Jay doubles over from both the shock of the impact and the pain that is currently shooting up his left leg and drops the ball into Mal’s expecting hands.

“Well, I took it. Not my fault you suck,” the smirk of pride that she’s sporting as she pushes him out of her room quickly turns into a glower after she gets him into the hallway. “Oh, and never call me princess.”

“Whatever,” Jay murmurs as he rights himself once again and continues to search the rest of Maleficent’s castle. He and Mal have many more altercations over the next few years or so, but he never calls her princess again. He’s man enough to admit that it’s partly out of respect and partly out of fear.

 

The first time that he sees her as more than just a savage pain in his ass is about two years later. He’s coming up on eight now and the only time that Jafar really pays him any attention is to dish out beatings when he hasn’t met his quota. On that particular day, the weather had been foul and the market had been scarce and he had spent hours scouring the island only to bring home two lamps and a silver ring. Needless to say, his father had not been pleased. Within an hour his back was covered with the blood of new and reopened wounds and Jafar had kicked him out of the house saying that he could spend the night on the curb with “the rest of the trash.”

He’s wandering through the market looking for something that he’s missed, something that might appease his father, when he sees her. Her hair is soaked from the rain and she’s carrying a bag that looks to be from Gaston’s shop. She hasn’t noticed him yet and he takes a minute to observe her. She looks a lot smaller when her eyes aren’t filled to the brim with fury and her shoulders aren’t pushed back in an air of pride and defiance. He’s about to look away because the aura of misery and vulnerability that she’s sporting right now doesn’t seem like something she’d be willing to share, but she catches his eye before he can. The change in her eyes and her demeanor is enough to give him whiplash.

“Don’t even think about it, dumbass.” It takes him a second to understand what she’s talking about and once he does he’s left wondering why stealing her shit had been the farthest thing from his mind. He rolls his eyes and sighs, either way he’s not in the mood right now.

“Wouldn’t dream of it, devil spawn.” It’s half-hearted at best and he detests how his voice breaks at the end. Jafar really did a fucking number on him. 

He supposes he must look pretty pitiful staggering through the rain in nothing but a ratty t-shirt and ripped leather pants when Mal decides it’s safe to come closer after less than ten seconds of deliberation. She sighs and rolls her eyes, stopping for a minute to take in his haggard appearance before gently grabbing his wrist and tugging him in the opposite direction of her previous destination. Had he not been utterly defeated and literally beaten down he probably would have put up more of a fight, but he was exhausted and wet and cold and he figured that whatever she could do to him wouldn’t be half as bad as what his father usually dished out.

The abandoned building that she drags him to is one of hundreds just like it on the isle. The majority of the metal on the structure is rusted beyond repair and planks of wood are literally falling off the sides of it, but at least it offers a reprieve from the rain. Once they’re inside, she pulls him to the corner of the area and gestures harshly for him to sit before disappearing into another room. He does as he’s told. He’s got nothing to lose. She returns a minute later with what appears to be a makeshift first-aid kit. There’s a bottle of alcohol, a roll of semi-clean bandages, and a little baggie of what appears to be aspirin.

“Where?” Her tone is biting but her eyes are softer than he’s ever seen them and he’s too shocked and tired to argue so he just points to his back. She’s behind him in seconds and while he’s jumpy at first, he relaxes when he realizes that her touch is much gentler than he thought it would be. She makes a sharp hissing noise that conveys empathy when she sees his back, but she doesn’t waste any time disinfecting the wounds and bandaging them up. It hurts like a bitch but he’s never been more grateful.

When he turns back around to face her she eyes him for a couple of moments, as if contemplating something, before reaching into the bag she had been carrying earlier and pulling out a gold bracelet adorned with jewels. He stares at her with a dumbfounded expression for longer than she’s comfortable with.

“Take it. She has a thousand of them that she doesn’t even wear. She just likes to buy out the jewelry stock so no one else can have it. She won’t miss one, it’s whatever,” she explains in a tone that’s far too disinterested. He doesn’t stop his staring so she averts her eyes and drops the bracelet in his lap. “Jesus, don’t go all psycho on me, dumbass.”

He doesn’t ask her why she’s doing all this. He doubts she’ll tell him, and she’s up and gone with her bag of goods before he can get a word out anyway. He sits in his daze and ponders the night’s happenings for another minute before getting up and trekking back home. Not only does his father let him in once he sees the expensive piece of jewelry, but he doesn’t lay a hand on him for the next three days.

 

The relationship begins to change a little after that. They’re by no means friends, but they spend less and less time antagonizing each other. They still play pranks on one another, but they’re more of the harmless variety and he finds that, on occasion, he tends to pick fights and steal from people that he knows to be her enemies. 

Over the years, he winds up being patched up in that abandoned building by her more times than he can count, but it’s not until three days after his eleventh birthday that the relationship shifts once more. 

Years later they’ll talk about how the rain always seems to play a key role in the pivotal moments of their lives but it being the Isle of the Lost, rain isn’t exactly a rare occurrence. Needless to say, it was raining when he was walking home with a bag of goods that he had scored from the unsuspecting customers at the Friday evening market. He knows that he’s collected enough to appease his father for the night and he’s just finishing congratulating himself when he hears it. Jay doesn’t know why he decides to investigate that day. Any other time he would have kept his head down and continued on his path. He’d just… he’d had a feeling. 

He follows the whimpering sound to an alley that he’s walked many times before. It’s not exactly secluded but it’s also not an area with a lot of foot traffic; the perfect place to count one’s wares after a good score. He smells the blood before he sees her and… Jesus Christ there’s a lot of it. It’s almost like a trail that leads him right to her and, for a brief moment, he kind of wishes he hadn’t strayed off course. 

Jay’s seen a lot of things in his lifetime, living on the Isle will do that to a kid. But Mal, covered in blood and laying next to a pool of her own vomit while sporting clothes that were ripped and shredded beyond repair is something that he will never get out of his head.

He goes to move towards her before freezing; he has no idea what he’s supposed to do in this situation. He’s a smart kid and living on the Isle had helped him to grow up fast, but he was at a complete loss right now. Should he touch her or move her? He doesn’t think that he would want anyone near him if he were in her situation, but he can’t just leave her here and it’s not like he can go to an adult with this. Half of them wouldn’t care and the other half? Well the other half are probably why she’s in this situation in the first place. He makes a split second decision and decides to move her somewhere he thinks she might be more comfortable. She’s barely clinging to consciousness and it breaks his heart beyond repair when she struggles feebly in his hold and lets out a sob of frustration. 

She’s out cold by the time he reaches the abandoned building and he thanks whatever powers that be for small mercies. He’s never been this gentle with anything in his entire life but despite his age, he recognizes the fragility of the situation and the importance of his actions from here on out. He spends the next hour cleaning up her hair, her face, and her torso but he never goes beyond that. There’s a shitty little clinic not far from his place that’s opened sporadically throughout the week. He promises himself that he’ll make sure he gets her there tomorrow before pulling off his jacket and covering her with it. He lays her in the corner of the building and stays close without encroaching on her space. He doesn’t leave her for the rest of the night and when he wakes up after having drifted off for a couple of hours, he finds that she’s shifted closer to him and adjusted his jacket so that she’s actually wearing it.

In the weeks after that night he takes to following her around more and more and she never really comments on his near constant presence. Her eyes are hollow and she walks with a weight on her shoulders but she learns to put up a front. Both of them are intimately aware that broken things just end up more broken on the Isle so she makes sure that no one ever sees her cracks. The hyper-vigilance and paranoia remain constant aspects of her personality, but she covers up the terror and reservation with bared teeth and cutting words. Even years later she has yet to acknowledge or admit what happened that night and any attempt to broach the subject is met with harsh avoidance and wild eyes. 

Not un-expectedly, extended silences and quiet solidarity soon turn into stupid jokes and the out-and-out defending of one another. By the time that Mal is eleven and Jay has just turned twelve, their relationship isn’t even a question anymore. They’re each other’s rocks. It’s rare to find one without the other and the majority of the people on the Isle know that starting a battle with one of them means starting a battle with both of them; a prospect that few kids their age are keen to do.

The relationship only grows from that point on and although they’re not the first of the four to admit their feelings to one another, flushed cheeks and longing looks are an aspect to their friendship long before Carlos and Evie come along. After all, it starts with Mal and Jay.


	2. Introducing Carlos De Vil and Evie Grimhilde

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which we meet Evie and Carlos.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! So some of you may have seen that I posted a second chapter to this story a few days ago. I wasn't super happy with my work in that update so I decided to remove it and change it up a little bit. I hope you guys like this one better as it shows more of what Carlos' home life is like.
> 
> I also wanted to give you guys some information about this story. First of all, I'm changing some things up in regards to ages and events. There is only a year between the oldest of the four, Jay, and the youngest of the four, Carlos. Evie and Mal fall somewhere in between those two. The biggest change to canon is that Evie was six when Maleficant banished her and the Evil Queen to their castle and eleven (almost twelve) when she comes back to school. I don't know when I'm gonna have the VK's get sent to Auradon, but it will probably be around when they're 15/16.
> 
> This is an OT4 story. They will all be in a romantic relationship with one another eventually, but these first few chapters are just covering how each of them meet one another. I don't plan to have Ben be apart of this relationship, but let me know what you guys think and maybe I'll reconsider.
> 
> Uma, Harry and Gil will be in this story but they aren't main characters. I don't know when I'm going to incorporate them yet but they will probably also be in a relationship eventually.
> 
> This story deal with some dark shit. Please take care of your mental health and don't read this if you think it may trigger you.
> 
> Finally, Thank you all for your comments and support. I am always open to hearing suggestions and opinions/ I could always use an editor if anyone is up for the task! I've already started working on the third chapter and it should be up within the week.

Carlos and Evie start out on much better terms than Mal and Jay. The former two would attribute this to the fact that they aren’t stubborn asses and are gifted with far more skill when it comes to social graces. The latter two would argue that statement as bullshit and say that it had more to do with the fact that Evie and Carlos were more isolated and desperate for love. The latter two would be correct.

 

Carlos knows of Evie for most of his life. It’s not like the daughter of the Evil Queen is a very inconspicuous title and Maleficent makes sure that the whole isle is made aware when she decides to banish the girl and her mother. That said, he doesn’t spend too much time thinking about the blue-haired princess until he sees her around school.

He’s eleven when Maleficent lifts her banishment and Evie waltzes back into Dragon Hall with a confident stride and a piercing gaze. She keeps her distance from most people and Carlos isn’t sure at first if it’s because she prefers to be seen as untouchable, or whether it has something to do with the death glares that Mal shoots at anyone who gets too close to her. He learns later that it has more to do with the fact that after five years of being trapped in a castle with no one but the Evil Queen and her lackies, Evie doesn’t really know how to get close to people. Carlos can relate.

It doesn’t take too long before he finds himself seeking her out. Well it’s not that he seeks her out so much as he makes room for her should she decide that she doesn’t want to be so lonely anymore. He knows the feeling of isolation that comes with being an outcast and while he’s learned to deal, something in him wants to protect her from that.

After about a week of subtly observing her around school to make sure that he’s not about to invite a god damn terror into his personal space, he begins presenting her with opportunities. He’s not a forceful person and he doesn’t really know her well enough to go above and beyond, so the openings he gives her are subtle, but openings none the less.

He throws her a wave and a half smile when he walks by her in the hallways and it doesn’t take long before her confused stares and defensive sneers become upturned lips and playful winks. Where once he would use his belongings and school work to take up as many seats at his lunch table as possible, he finds himself beginning to clear a space for her whenever she walks into the cafeteria.

It only takes him a day or two to realize that she’s completely different than he’d expected and a little under a week to decide that he genuinely likes her. Where he had thought that she would be self-absorbed and overly talkative, she turns out to be genuine and attentive. He learns that she tends to live in her head almost as much as he does and that she thinks carefully about what she’s going to say before she says it. She’s a little harder than he’d thought she’d be and a hell of a lot more stubborn, but the thing he finds the most fascinating about her is her intellect. He’s well aware that he tends to use his own intelligence as a shield, so he’s surprised to find that she keeps her under wraps. Not to the point where he can’t see it peaking through every now and then, but enough so that it takes a few months before she begins to openly speak with him about subjects that others may consider “nerdy”.  
He considers her his friend within the first few weeks of meeting her, but his trust is harder to earn and it’s not until seven months later that their relationship shifts from being something that he enjoys to something that he needs.

 

The winter weather has begun to fade away from the Isle, but spring has yet to take hold and the cold air is causing his bones to ache. He’s been running on little to no sleep for about four days and he’s still got three pages of his chore list left to finish. He promises that he’s only going to close his eyes for a few minutes. That afternoon he wakes up to one of the worst beatings that he has ever received. By the end of it he counts a dislocated shoulder, several broken ribs, a broken eye socket and a possible concussion. He misses school for three days.

On the fourth day, he’s scrubbing the floor with his good arm when he hears the back door creak open. His mother is asleep upstairs and he’s in no condition to fight so he just continues on with his work. He figures that, on the off chance that the intruder doesn’t kill him, he might as well have all of his bases covered.

“Jesus Christ, Carlos!” Evie’s voice startles him but he doesn’t really have the energy to ask her what she’s doing here or to tell her to get the hell out, so he just shushes her and goes back to scrubbing. “Carlos-”

“Evie, please.” He must look just as desperate and exhausted as he feels because she stops talking and her look of shock turns into one of understanding. She seems to deliberate something for about two seconds before she crouches down and gently takes the scrub brush from his hand. “I need-”

“Is she here?” she cuts him off before he can finish but he’s never seen her look more furious than she does right now so he answers right away.

“She’s sleeping upstairs.” He hates the way that his voice quivers and he hopes that she doesn’t notice, but he knows that she does when her eyes soften.

“Okay. Wait in the kitchen.” He wants to protest but she shoots him a look that tells him that she’s not budging on this and he’s way too tired to argue. It doesn’t seem like he waits for very long, but when she comes back in he looks at the clock and sees that it’s been forty-five minutes. “What else?”

“What?” He’s genuinely confused.

“I scrubbed the floors. What else do you have to do?” He’s never been slow to catch on to things but he can’t follow what she’s saying. There’s no way that she’s offering to do his chores. There’s no way that she would miss school just to help him. There’s no way that she cares this much and yet… “Carlos, what else?”

He’s too shocked to do anything besides point to the table where his list is but she seems to get the point. His brain catches up with him eventually and he moves to help her, but she shoots him a withering glare and he’s quick to fall back into his chair.

It takes her two and a half hours to finish the rest of his list and he finds himself falling asleep after the first hour. He shoots awake in a panic when he feels a hand on his shoulder, only to find Evie standing a few feet away from him.

“I’m done and I heard Cruella moving around upstairs, so I’m gonna head out.” The sheer disgust in her voice when she says his mother’s name is enough to garner a soft smile from him. He gives her a shy nod and she returns it with her own small smile before slipping back out of the door that she had entered through.

 

She returns to help him again over the next few weeks but she never tells him why. Things are never the same after that. What began as an attempt to keep a lost soul company, becomes one of the most important relationships in both of their lives within less than a year. They don’t know each other the longest and their relationship isn’t the most complex, but it’s never needed to be. Carlos and Evie knew that they were meant to be together long before they realized in what context that would be, and there’s something beautiful in the fact that that was always enough for both of them.


End file.
